Tornado leaves path of destruction

For most of Saturday, Gloucester residents went about the day under a tornado watch, which means simply the conditions are ripe for a tornado to form.

All the youth soccer games were played and the high school baseball and softball games started three hours earlier to beat the thunderstorms forecast for later that afternoon.

It was a windy, cloudy afternoon, nothing exceptional for a day in mid-April. There was no hint of what was to come.

Abingdon Volunteer Fire & Rescue Squad Fire Chief Herb Austin had been watching the Weather Channel all day, keeping an eye on the swarm of tornadoes that had swept across North Carolina and other parts of the South.

Then came the emergency broadcast Austin was dreading: A tornado had been spotted and was heading for Gloucester Point.

"I got all my gear and got in the truck," Austin said. "I was going to be somewhere other than Gloucester Point."

At 6:45 p.m., a tornado had formed in a black-colored storm cell that was just south of the Surry Power Plant in Surry County, according to a National Weather Service survey.

The tornado headed across the James River into James City County, where it tore through the Kingsmill and Grove communities before crossing the York River and taking aim at Gloucester.

When it touched land in Gloucester, the tornado was howling with three-second wind gusts estimated at between 136 and 165 miles per hour.

"I've lived here 30 years and I've never seen that," Austin said.

Trees were snapped like matchsticks or uprooted, singlewide trailers exploded and in some cases entire homes were lifted off foundations as the twister carved a path through Gloucester.

The first of the 758 calls made to the 911 center in Gloucester came at 7:07 p.m.

"The first call came in from the Shelly Road area from residents screaming into the phone that they had been hit by a tornado," said Gloucester Sheriff's Chief Dep. Darrell Warren.

A short time later, two deputies were in the Clopton area on Hickory Fork Road. One of the deputies had to take evasive action to miss a falling tree. Warren said they had just missed the tail end of the tornado.

Within moments someone was banging on the deputy's car window asking for help. The person lived on Hummingbird Lane, a private, narrow road that ends almost directly behind Page Middle School.

Austin said his department was first called out at 7:19 p.m. to respond to a couple trapped in a trailer on Hummingbird Lane. When the deputies and volunteer firefighters reached the home of Periclis and Ruth Ann Koutsombinas, all that remained was rubble.

"You can see the bricks there where the trailer sat," Austin said. "And there's no trailer. The frame for the trailer is 20 feet up in the air in the trees."

Periclis Koutsombinas, 60, had died of injuries by the time rescuers reached the home, but they managed to pull Ruth Ann Koutsombinas from the wreckage. She was seriously injured, but alive.

On Shelly Road, Richard Ingram, 53, was killed when his home was lifted off its foundation and slammed down yards away. Neighbors found his body in the garage.

Dozens of others in the area were more fortunate. Malisha Gray had been washing her hands in the kitchen sink of her Cedar Bush home when the lights began flickering around 7 p.m.

"I thought, 'Great, I'm going to lose power,'" she said. "I was drying my hands off when the lights went off for good. That's when I heard a freight train sound, like what everyone says. It's true, it sounded like a roaring."

Then the pressure dropped and her ears began bursting as if she was deep under water. Gray ran the length of her single-story home and hid in a bedroom. The house began shaking as she prayed for her life.

"Four seconds later it was gone and I had a tree on my house with a limb in the bedroom," she said. "At first I couldn't get out of the house because there were several trees that fell on my front door. Then I had to pry open the back door."

On Monday afternoon, Gray was waiting for an insurance adjuster to gauge the damage, counting herself fortunate to have survived.

The tornado continued on its northeast path, leaving Page Middle School in shambles, eventually strewing debris as far as Middlesex County — gear such as helmets stored in a Gloucester Youth Football League shed at the school have been found in Ware Neck — before crossing Route 17.

More than a dozen homes along T.C. Walker Road to the intersection of Short Lane Road suffered varying degrees of damage before the tornado bore down on Ware Neck.

A map of the homes damaged by the tornado assembled by Gloucester County officials shows a jumble of residences in the Glen Roy Estates neighborhood were hammered.

The tornado continued on its northeast track, destroying and damaging homes on Exchange, Toddsbury and Waverly lanes. The National Weather Service estimated the tornado traveled 30 miles from Surry through Gloucester before it dissipated at 7:20 p.m. just east of Route 14 across the Mathews County line.

The weather service determined the tornado's path ranged from 200 yards wide to a half-mile, with its highest intensity occurring in Clopton, near the intersection of Cedar Bush and Hickory Fork roads.

Immediately after the tornado blitzed through Gloucester, teams of sheriff's deputies and volunteer firefighters fanned out from Saturday night into Sunday morning, going house to house throughout the Coke area and in the heavily damaged vicinity of Hickory Fork Road.

"By 2 o'clock in the morning we had every house we could get to searched twice and people transported out of there," Austin said.

Austin remains amazed by the resolve of the volunteers, deputies and neighbors, who tried to get to homes rendered inaccessible by downed trees, power lines and debris.

"What kind of a person gets up from the dinner table and heads out into that storm?" he said. "When we first got up there it was pouring rain and the wind was blowing and there was lightning. They were crawling around looking for people in this pouring rain. You can't train that."

On Sunday and Monday armies of county residents and volunteers from churches, community groups, even the high school baseball team were clearing trees, brush and debris.

"The place was swarming with people," Austin said. "I've never seen so many chainsaws in my life."

The latest tally compiled by Gloucester County officials lists 200 residences damaged by the tornado, including 11 completely destroyed. The damage estimate is $8 million. Twenty-four people were injured.

In addition to Ingram and Periclis Koutsombinas, Cecil Wray PageJr., 90, died of a medical emergency after the tornado.

A massive storm hit Hampton Roads April 16, spawning tornadoes. Rural areas in the Gloucester and Isle of Wight areas were especially hard hit. Three people in Gloucester died in the storm, and a tornado tore a path through Page Middle School, destroying much of the building. Many homes were destroyed,...

Newport News Police shot and killed 23-year-old Kawanza Jamal Beaty at about 2 a.m. on Saturday, July 4 near 18th Street and Peterson Place after police said he refused orders to drop the sawed-off shotgun he was carrying.